2.5MB virtual disk on a Tandy 1000 EX? (Or any PC or XT)

Can you imagine 2.5 megs of space on a floppy with a Tandy 1000 EX? It is possible using a Gotek Floppy Emulator with HXC firmware. This gives you a lot more room for larger games than would normally fit on a single 720k or 360k diskette. (All testing done with DOS 6.22.) This does not require any modifications to the PC or special adapter cards inside the computer.
You can use this same flashed emulator on other computers like the Atari ST and Amiga as well!
GoTek Floppy Emulator from eBay:
www.ebay.com/itm/SFR1M44-U100K...
(Search for SFR1M44.)
Flash HXC firmware €10 from hxc2001.com/store/index.html
Larger volumes won't read correctly without BIOS patch in config.sys that comes with NFORMAT:
toastytech.com/files/nformat.html
Use the HXC utilities to make large floppy images and load them up with apps and games!
Examples of stuff you can do: All of Deskmate 3.0.5 fits onto a single 2.5mb image. You can run many games that were originally on high density floppies on a machine without a hard drive.

[@The8BitGuy]

Nice... It amazes me that when IBM dumped the PCJr that they didn't continue to use the graphics chip in the rest of their lineup.... Tandy was smart!

[@harshbarj]

Likely because EGA came out in 1984 the same year the PCjr came out. While TGA/PCjr was a great graphics adapter at the time, EGA was far superior. Seeing the EGA standard was developed by IBM, why would they make a PCjr video adapter for their business machines when a better replacement for was already about to be released?

[@wishusknight3009]

price.. ega was the cost of an entire PCjr when it launched.

[@tomluptowski]

Thank you so much for loading up PIX1000 it was a treat to see. I apologize that it's not that intuitive to work. --------------- USING THE PROGRAM ----------------- When the program is started a title screen will appear while the program loads it's menus. When ready the screen will go black and the tool bar will appear across the top of the screen. It is now ready to go. The program is controlled with either the keyboard or a joystick (the self-centering kind works best). The program starts up in keyboard mode but can be switched anytime to joystick control by pressing "J", and back to keyboard by pressing "K". When in joystick mode you can switch between right or left joystick being active by pressing "R" for right or "L" for left, (left is the default). Program control is basically as follows. ACTION KEYBOARD JOYSTICK ============================================================== move cursor numeric keypad stick (the 5 key will toggle the distance the cursor moves from 1, 5, and 25 pixels) select tool "ENTER" button 1 select color "ENTER" button 1 * make tool active "ENTER" button 1 (hold down) turn off tool "ENTER" button 1 (release) ** request color menu "ESC" button 2 *** request tool bar "ESC" button 2 undo spacebar spacebar full screen cross hair " = " " = " (when circle tool is selected and color menu is on screen) + circle start angle " , " " , " - circle start angle " < " " < " + circle end angle " . " " . " - circle end angle " > " " > " (when paintbrush tool is selected and color menu is on screen) toggle 3 brush sizes " . " " . " (when spray tool is selected and color menu is on screen) toggle 3 brush sizes " . " " . " toggle 5 spray patterns " , " " , " (when in magnify mode) select color " , " and " . " " , " and " . " keyboard control " K " " K " joystick control " J " " J " right joystick " R " " R " left joystick " L " " L " * more detail on individual tools follows. ** only on tools that require color selection. *** from color menu on tools that require color selection. The basic flow of the program is as follows; Select a tool Select a color * Use tool Go back to color menu * Go back to tool bar. * not all tools require a color choice. The full manual is in the folder, and there are some demo images you can load that I created with it that show off what you can do with it if you get curious. Regardless thanks again for at least checking it out it was a thrill to see the splash screen and the tool bar from something I wrote almost 30 years ago. Take care.

[@fandenivoldsk]

Do you have a link to the software, so we can try it out?

[@tomluptowski]

mine and quite a few more are here www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/graphics.html

[@electronash]

Tom Luptowski Nice work. ;) I can really appreciate the effort that goes into a program like that, especially in BASIC. hehe A few years ago, I wrote my own version of the Quantel Paintbox GUI in pure Verilog, and managed to get it to work with an original Wacom serial tablet. I'm not very good at drawing, but have fond memories of messing with things like DanCAD 3D on our old Olivetti PC-1 in the 80s, or Deluxe Paint on the Amiga etc.

[@hansoak3664]

Tom says... RTFM! lol Excellent program, Tom. Old Tandy 1000A user here.

[@josephalbrecht3735]

I really have enjoyed all your videos about your Tandy 1000 EX. I got my first Tandy 1000 in 1985. I was frustrated by the lack of support for the graphics and sound in the development environments of the day. These included QuickBASIC and Turbo Pascal. I would go on to write a TSR called GRAFIX in 1988 that allowed BIOS calls to it through an interfacing library that could be added to both QuickBASIC and Turbo Pascal. I also wrote the FASTGRAF program you referenced in your video. This has brought back a lot of memories. Keep up the good work and thanks for the blast from the past!

[@borismatesin]

The past 4 videos have been an interesting ride. I've been eyeing a Tandy 1000-series ever since I saw one on The 8-Bit Guy's channel, and your videos showed me exactly how much they're really expandable!

[@BandanazX]

I remember getting a copy of this when I was a kid and playing it with my friends while worrying I might get caught. It ran fine on my PCjr with 512KB. Also, the irony is that the floppy emulator has more power than that whole computer.

[@Robo10q]

I really like all in one computers. Your Tandy 100EX and the upgrades are great.

[@pappakilo3965]

Great video. Those HxC2001 drive emulators are the best. A couple of years ago I was messing with an old Z80 computer and the HxC2001 emulator allowed me to replace its clapped out 5.25" drive with a memory stick. Other associated hardware and software from other suppliers allowed me to drag raw data from part-corrupted diskettes and to assemble one good diskette image (hard work but worth it as a retro computing exercise).

[@SkuldChan42]

Neat video - I did a video on repairing the simm slots on an Amiga 4000 ironically (where I demo'd lightwave) - neat to see this machine was used for similar things. On the Amiga the dongle was essentially the VT-4000 expansion card.

[@doskungen]

Hey Adrian! I just happened to find this video on youtube. Enjoy watching all these vintage machines (I grew up on the VIC20, C64 and Amiga mostly). When playing Leisure Suit Larry if I remember correctly you can hit ALT-X to skip the questions, and if you bring up the dropdown menu (hitting ESC or using the mouse I think) you can then set the speed for the game in there...

[@raggededge82]

16:08 So I did some Googling and found this about the PTL Club: "The january 1989 release Church Chat Volume 4 featured a history of the group, and we quote "PTL started out with 5 members.. The members were: Me, Bad Brains, Death Star, The Hermit and Rambo. The Hermit and Rambo dropped out when PTL first started getting going. Mr. Transistor joined us and his first crack was Marble Madness which many people seemed to think was almost impossible to crack at the time. Death Star seemed to fade away after my last major board crash before summer or during summer. I'm not really sure exactly when since my 286 is a piece of shit and is always having Hard Drive crashes or system problems... Oh yes I almost forgot.. Somewhere along the lines, we merged with CPI (Canadian Pirates Inc.) I believe was their acronym at first.. And then they changed to KGB .. KGB released a few cracks under PTL but seemed to fade away... They cracked that I can think of [BoulderDash Construction Kit, Ultima I, and Might & Magic]. There are more I am sure but I can not think of them right now. Sometime after Death Star was lost, Specular Vision joined PTL.. He has cracked a couple things that I can think of [BattleHawks 1942, The Train, and Space Station Oblivion].. He has probably done more but I do not have the titles handy. Now, last but not least... We have just gotten Jenetic Bytemare who's cracks that I know of are listed at the beginning of this file." Church Chat Volume 4 further explained that "Jenetic Bytemare has joined PTL", and went on to list The Spiker, Dessert Foxx, Specular Vision, The Grand Elusion, Bad Brains and Jenetic Bytemare as members at that time." Source: demozoo.org/groups/53053/

[@sycyourtube]

I have a Tandy 1000 EX and was lookin to do this exact setup for about 5 years now. Thanks for showing me that it is possible. Ill have to look into this as it would cost me no more than 60$ to get a fully working Tandy again. I still miss the 1000 HX I had as a kid. I can emagine that a 1000 HX would be awesome with one of the emulators and a real 720kb drive built in. You could back up all of your software to the usb in no time.

[@mszymcza]

Nice work Adrian!

[@lawrencefife7818]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I had a Tandy 1000 SX back in the day and played almost all of those games on it. Marble Madness was a strange one. I never saw that colour palette anywhere else. I actually bought it, and the untracked version just booted right off the floppies and seemed to bypass DOS altogether. My friends and I pirated and played practically all the Sierra games from that era. We had to clandestinely play Leisure Suit Larry when Mom wasn't looking, but those games seemed to run not all right on the 7.16 MHz processor. Loved my Tandy 1000 practically more than any other computer I've ever owned. It had so much character.

[@BlackEpyon]

My very first computer when I was a kid was the Tandy 1000 HX. Still have it, and I keep it in good working order. Even made my own PLUS version of lotech's ISA CompactFlash adapter for it on a perf board. I'd have bought the ISA board and just gotten an adapter, but with the ISA I/O card I have in there, there isn't enough room for another adapter. CompactFlash cards these days are usually 32-128GB. I had an old 16MB one to use for it, which is close enough to a hard drive of the day.

[@jerrybandy3827]

Our first "PC compatible" computer was a Tandy 1000 HX and I thought I had it maxed out then. That really brought back some old memories of CompuServe and AOL. It really was a decent computer at the time.

[@ChadDoebelin]

This will be helpful thank you Adrian!

[@SkyCharger001]

Marble Madness is using the CGA 3rd (or 5th, depending on how you count them) palette. Due to being tied to the disabling of the composite color-burst, on composite this palette is rendered as crisp monochrome.

[@JoeJacksonJr]

Enjoyed the video.. I had a Tandy 1000HX back in the day.

[@BlackEpyon]

I still have mine ;)

[@CanuckGod]

Wow, I had forgotten about NFormat, I had actually run that as a teenager over 20 years ago... I think someone had uploaded it to a BBS or something, can't recall, but yeah, it was handy for getting more than 1.44MB or 720KB on floppies. Good find!

[@shmehfleh3115]

There's a 'speed' option in those old Sierra games, which is usually set to slow by default. I played LSL on a regular old XT way back in the day, and it was more than up to the task.

[@steven-vn9ui]

Man, you are soo clever. Fascinated.

[@smallmoneysalvia]

I really wish he’d provide source code for the floppy emulator project. I understand wanting to make money from it, but accepting donations and providing the source code would open this device up to SO many more esoteric systems for developers who want to contribute. I kinda want to write my own open-source firmware now seeing that he’s charging for it.

[@tcam333]

Using the same method I was able to use 6.38meg images on my Tandy 1000 TL/3. Great for moving over larger programs.

[@BrainSlugs83]

We used to just use null-modem serial/lpt cables, and Norton Commander (for DOS). Worked great for file transfers.

[@mattparker9726]

so kewl! LSL with Tandy graphics! AWESOME!

[@BlackEpyon]

Speaking of changing the cable, I finally figured out after watching your last video, that the floppy on my Tandy 1000 RSX, the very last of the 1000 line, ALSO looks for DS0. I'd never bothered before to look at the old floppy (which I kept) to see that it had a drive selector switch, and couldn't figure out why the new ones never worked on the onboard floppy controller. Now I don't need that extra controller card taking up space for the replacement floppy. I've since replaced it with the SCSI card for an external CD-ROM :)

[@smallmoneysalvia]

Set your shutter speed manually to get rid of the flashing/blanking screen

[@trulahn]

You forgot your early Sierra-Online adventure game controls. You can change the movement speed from the menu from slow to normal to fast to fastest.

[@mspenrice]

I thought that Marble Madness palette was maybe the "secret" third CGA mode (red, cyan, white, and default black background), looking a bit strange on camera... but with a bit of digging it looks like they took the 4-colour MCGA mode route with the PCjr and Tandy and just reused the exact same graphics with a colour palette swap. From the actual CGA colours for each level it looks like they only even changed one colour a time. On the level you played, changing cyan to light blue (it was already RCWK rather than MCWK), and on the later levels which used the RYGK palette the yellow was changed to white. Like that's literally their approach to making it look better on more capable PC compatible hardware (saving quite a lot of disc space of course, but surely they could have given the sprites different palettes each?), even though on other 16-bits and even some 8-bit consoles it was much more colourful...

[@mspenrice]

Sounds pretty much exactly like how MCGA worked but with only 16 colours to choose from instead of 262,144. Wouldn't be too surprised to find that IBM actually re-used a *little* of the PCjr chipset inside the MCGA, therefore... Odd thing is how EGA and VGA *don't* appear to have that ability (the swapping-out they can do only appears to take hold at the 16 colour level and above). So even if you had a game like this which supported a free choice of 4 colours at 320x200 on PCjr/Tandy/MCGA, it'd be stuck with the default CGA colours.

[@Cliff_Dixon_42]

The very first hard drive I had on a DOS PC was a 5 MB unit (Yes, smaller than the standard HD on the PC XT). This comes close to having the equivalent of a small hard drive.

[@goncalodumas]

Dude, you are awsome!

[@stargawper]

Leisure suit larry a real blast from the past.

[@alynicholls3230]

some people use led's for the diode function.

[@CrazyMan_Engineer]

I noticed the red led flashes briefly when changing floppy images. It would be cool if the bios patch .sys could be intergrated into the system bios chip.

[@BertGrink]

I just checked out the hxc2001 website and LO! it supports BOTH Amiga AND Amstrad CPC/ZX Spectrum +3 computers now. YAY!

[@JessHull]

Cool microsoft green mouse!

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

Actually, red-cyan-white-black was indeed a CGA palette, albeit an unofficial sort-of hack. Look up screenshots for the DOS version of _Life & Death_ . en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Standard_graphics_modes

[@johneygd]

It's amezing these day's how analogue devices can be emulated these day's.

[@nullplan01]

In case anyone is interested: FASTDRV sets the seek time in the floppy parameters to 4ms. They claim it is usually set to 8ms, RBIL claims it is set to 15ms. In any case, apparently 4ms should work. But you might get more seek errors as your drive ages. Anyway, FASTDRV only writes to the parameter table and issues a disk system reset command. So it is not a TSR. BIOSPTCH installs a new disk service interrupt handler, so it is a TSR. That new handler will try calling the old handler and on error, if it was a call for a floppy drive, it will try to set the number of sectors per track to 27 (I don't know why), and it will try to manipulate the "double stepping required" bit in the BDA before retrying. Weirdly, that first patch only affects the first floppy drive.

[@lordmmx1303]

did you noticed that red led flashed everytime you pressed button to change virtual floppy?

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

Huh. Yup, that's definitely what it's for. I guess they realized it's pointless since the SSD (seven-segment-display) is more informative. Too bad they didn't make it display drive activity. (I _hate_ when mfgs forgo drive-activity LEDs as though they're not necessary since they are actually a crucial piece of information. Once upon a time,hard-drives actually came with LED connectors so that each one could show its own individual activity. 👍)

[@tommm369]

@@user-vn7ce5ig1z I agree, why vendors get rid of key best features is beyond me. Like triangle windows and western mirrors on a pickup.. drive activity lights, starrt menus etc.

[@rockytom5889]

@@user-vn7ce5ig1z A lil bit late, but sas drives still have their own drive leds built in, makes it easier to spot the bad drives in a rack.

[@peteasmr2952]

8:08 Imagine how many things I could copy onto there. That line has been said with every progression in storage media. Kinda surreal with how far we have come compared to 2.5mb.

[@brianv2871]

Thanks for this video.. Inspires me to see if I can get any of my old systems working, install procomm or qmodem, and call up the 'Anarchy Burger II' BBS for some Warez. :)

[@davindameron9092]

Amazing Video! I recently got one of the 720k models, and while it works, I can't get the normal software (USB_Floppy_Manager_v1.40i) on my Windows 10 box to successfully read/write images to any drive other than 000. I have one of the 1.44mb drives as well and will try this out.

[@ExtremePragmatist]

You could increase the game speed of those Sierra adventure games by entering "faster" or "fastest", to make it run better on your system. :)

[@ncmattj]

PTL Club? I wonder if that was a reference to Jim and Tammy Baker back in the day.

[@retrogamer33]

I have a floppy drive emulator in my Atari ST, it makes a huge difference to a slow floppy disk drive.

[@MonochromeWench]

wierd marble madness screen at startup was full of ansi escape sequences. probably displays something special if you had ansi.sys loaded

[@BenevolentChum]

There's a menu item on Leisure Suit Larry that allows you to adjust the speed. Choose the highest speed computers with slower processing speed.

[@ExStaticBass]

This makes me seriously curious. Now to preface this, Amiga had what was called an "opti-floppy" which was essentially the same thing as a zip disk. It had an optical track on the top and magnetic medium on the bottom. If one of those BIOS images can handle that I could do a lot towards restoring my old Amiga 2000 and my 4000/030. You see the problem is that you couldn't just instal an optical drive in them and have it work. Workbench needed special drivers and I don't have that Kickstart image anymore. If this is something you'd like to dig into, shoot me a message.

[@2010stoof]

Red light seems to flash when you're changing numbers. At least it looked like that when you were changing from 3-2-1-2-3

[@matthewkriebel7342]

I don't want to be unfair to the guy and all his hard work, but I'm kinda disappointed the emulator firmware isn't open source.

[@BertGrink]

I am pretty sure that a LOT of research has gone into the HXC project, so i wouldn't begrudge the man a fair compensation.

[@electronash]

Matthew Kriebel I think it is fair enough to make a bit of profit for the hundreds of hours of work that goes into writing / debugging / maintaining firmware like that. It does support tons of different machines, including things like synthesizers / keyboards, CAD machines, sewing machines etc., which is no mean feat. But, there is now an open-source alternative. :D (see my post elsewhere on here, for details of Keir Fraser's new firmware on github.) Don't quote me on this, but I think the code might already have basic support for standard PC floppy images?

[@electronash]

Keir recently added support for OLED displays to the firmware, but I'm hoping we can figure out how to add my on-screen display idea to the STM32 as well. This was using a small / cheap $20 FPGA board, but I think the STM32 should be able to handle it directly via DMA (which won't affect the normal operation). The main motivator for this is to hopefully stop so many people from cutting huge holes in their retro machine cases to install the Gotek LCD. (I personally never understood the need for that, as the LCD can always be kept external anyway, or just use the menu software that's available for the Amiga, Amstrad, and other machines.) drive.google.com/file/d/0B1grqFdAErsrQ3BJZ1hFVUpMcHc/view?usp=drivesdk

[@JeffHxC2001]

You want it open source to do something on the code ? Or just to not having to pay it (like 99% of people) ? How can i justify to work on this hundred of hours (firmware/software dev + support) if i didn't get anything in return ? For the glory maybe ? :)). I really don't think that i am hurting someone with this 10/12Euros license...

[@wishusknight3009]

my gotec drives all seem to have issues with writing files to the usb drive from the pc that the gotec is plugged into. not sure if its the usb drive i have or if they are really that crappy. 3 different gotecs have exhibited this. Wonder if your firmware can help

[@QuaaludeCharlie]

I Love this :) QC

[@TheTurnipKing]

21:09 AGI Sierra games should work fine on an XT class machine, but you might need to go into the menus and ramp up the game speed.

[@skilletpan5674]

If people are intersted in high capacity formatting and software that allows this. You can still find the software 2m on the internet. 2m allowed high formatting of 3.2in and 5.25in disks. From 1.44 to about 1.7 or 1.8mb and 2.4 to about 2.8mb or there abouts. googling for "2m30.zip" should give you a few archived sites. Also the utilities ANADISK and TELEDISK are also great for archiving/copying disks. ANADISK is also really good for checking a disk to see if it has issues and will let you set the various paramaters on a floppy disk (yes you can make really stupidly high capacity disks that will quickly die if you sneeze. Stuff like 20mb or 30mb on a 3.25in floppy). There are a few other utilities that do similar but the 2m30.zip contains driver files to allow access to reading and writing the higher density disks from xt. If you do some googling people have had some sucess with upgrading their XTs to use 1.44mb floppies for example.

[@JmanNo42]

Could the led be floppy master slave, "is there such?" at least on cable?

[@mattalki]

To get any sierra title to run quicker, just type 'fast'. You're running in 'normal' by default. Loving the Tandy upgrades! I still have my Tandy 1000TL from when I was a teenager. Good times.

[@robmcdevitt4107]

Also, don't hold down the arrow key to walk, it makes them crawl in AGI games. All AGI games run just fine on an XT class machine.

[@drheck]

To expand on that, press the key once to start moving then again to stop. You are walking slow because when you hold the key you are walking and stopping over and over.

[@CommodoreGreg]

Ahh.....nformat. I used that like a mad man back in the day. Had to be really careful what parameters you used due to different 3.5 drives, but it was easy to get an extra 200KB-300KB reliably out of a standard 1.44MB disk and still have it usable on nearly all unpatched systems.

[@dronepilotflyby9481]

Interesting, the joystick is identical to the PCjr. I still use the jr for fun and have the drive expansion that sits on top looking like it was part of the original machine. Your drive mod would be perfect for it.

[@electronash]

Keep an eye on the new open-source firmware for the Gotek drives. If you Google "FlashFloppy Keir Fraser", you'll find the github. The FW is free of course, and already working well on the Amiga, and I believe the standard "PC Style" formats are supported now too. You don't need to use the serial TTL dongle for Flashing the STM32 either - you can simply use a USB Type A to Type A cable, which plugs directly into the front of the Gotek, and even powers it during the Flash update. (although, I'm fairly sure Jeff's HxC firmware updater still requires a TTL serial dongle.) Most STM32 chips with USB have a USB DFU Bootloader alongside the serial mode. You just need to tie the "TX" pin on the Gotek to +5V (which is safe for that STM32 IO pin), then tie the BOOT0 pin to +3V3, then plug in the USB cable from the PC directly into the Gotek. You can then use the DFuSe software to Flash the drive using the new free firmware. ;) (the DFuSe software has a tool for converting HEX files to DFU files.) Just be sure to completely unplug both the host machine's ribbon cable and Molex power from the Gotek during the USB Flash process! Otherwise, the PC will try to power the whole retro machine via a USB port. :o lol Lots more info on the new firmware on the "Commodore Amiga" Facebook group. ;)

[@electronash]

Adrian Black No problem. ;) I'd been waiting for an open-source version for years, so it's great to see it happen. Keir has been doing constant updates, but he's still not quite there with 1.44 MB image support just yet. It does support 720K images OK, apparently, and I believe Atari ST and Amstrad CPC stuff. My good friend Glen just did a vid on the USB Flashing process. (no need to solder the USB plugs though tbh, you can just cut and join two old cables. hehe) kzbin.info/www/bejne/gXmVhWV_gLKUa5o So yeah, if you do need 1.44 MB support, that may be a bit longer, but probably not too far away. EDIT: Actually, 1.44MB (and above) might work OK with HFE files, but don't quote me on that. :p

[@electronash]

Adrian Black I'm hoping we can do my On-screen display idea for the Gotek too... Mainly in an effort to hopefully reduce the number of people cutting huge holes in their retro machines for the Gotek LCD / OLED. I've tested this on an Amiga 600 using an FPGA, but ideally want to use an MCU to make it a fairly cheap add-on for the Gotek... drive.google.com/file/d/0B1grqFdAErsrQ3BJZ1hFVUpMcHc/view?usp=drivesdk The STM32 should have some spare DMA to handle most of the OSD stuff, but it might be easier just to make a plug-in board with at ATmega on it. That would hook up to the internal pins on the Gotek, where the LCD normally connects (with a pass-through). It would then only require a small mod to the retro machine to hook up the sync signals, and inject the OSD video. On most Amigas, it's probably easier to mod the analog RGB path rather than digital, which is what I did for that test vid above.

[@electronash]

Adrian Black Oh, btw - if you do flash a Gotek with FlashFloppy, then you'll obviously need to pay the €10 again if you want to revert to the HxC firmware. (thought I'd point that out, before people start complaining. lol) With FlashFloppy, once you've done flashed the initial HEX / DFU file, all future updates can be done via USB stick. (similar to HxC).

[@JeffHxC2001]

To Ash : This firmware is a pure robbery of the HxC project's intellectual property and work. Repositories forked as mirror... Copy/past of the file-selector code, Copy/past of the libhxc code and GPL violation (answer: "i found it on a forum" ... seriously...), Copy/past of the gotek extension ideas (lcd, buzzer,...), each idea discussed on the hxc forum is copied sooner, sponger behavior : Directly use the hxc tools : File selector, converter software, file formats, config file, protocols... This took me years to build this brick by brick and you come to copy the whole construction to give it to everyone for free and you are proud of this ? Do you want i do the same thing with your own personal stuffs ? Seriously, you and your friend suck as hell.

[@electronash]

JeffHxC2001 Oh, here we go. I know nothing about how Keir went about writing the code, I was just happy to see somebody releasing an open-source version. I wasn't directly involved at all with the development of the code, and only knew of its existence after release. If you have reasons to believe any code was "ripped off", then I suggest you talk directly to Keir instead.

[@cbmeeks]

Did you use the TTL CGA cable all the time or did you also use composite?

[@ShainAndrews]

Think I still have some copies of some games that would work on that Tandy. Gunship is the only one I remember off the top of my head, but I'm sure I have others as well. Let me know if you are interested and I'll dig them out and see about posting a copy for you.

[@j.d.6915]

You could get the entire "King's Quest IV" onto one image...I mention this because as I kid I hated the fact it took eight 360k disks to play.

[@SpearM3064]

+J.D. It might still take eight 360k disks to play, if it searches for a particular disk name. (It probably doesn't, but the only way to know is to try it.)

[@BlackEpyon]

That's why to get a compact flash expansion card.

[@TH3DUDE0075]

The best part of this video was when you were playing marble madness and were about a millisecond from accidentally saying “it beat me right off” - laughed out loud as I heard you start to say “beat” and quickly switch to “bash” as you realized how it would sound lmao

[@ManuelvanAmerongen]

When I had my EX back in the 80ties i managed to use it with a 20Mb harddisk. It was possible because the EX is 100% compatibel. The harddisk was an MFM, external and with his own PSU.

[@mortrek]

I played LSL on the Tandy 1000 EX. It runs fine off of floppies. Iirc you have to go into the game menu and set the walk speed.

[@AshtonCoolman]

That joystick gave me flashbacks of trying to land my Cesna is Flight Simulator on a Turbo XT running at about 3.5FPS.....

[@martinmeyer2008]

I'm so going to go and play Leisure Suit Larry now...but using DosBox :-)

[@larrygall5831]

I made a few with 65k lines. Line numbers ended up with no room for another lol. I think the 65k lines was a limiting factor because of memory. IDK for sure, maybe they just limited the lines to 65,000. Maybe you could check that with yours since it has more than the 256k I had. Try making a line number of 70,000 or something.

[@SpearM3064]

+Larry Gall Nah, it was a limit because early versions of Microsoft BASIC used a two-byte unsigned integer to store the line number, so all line numbers had to be in the range 0-65535. (0-62999 in some versions of BASIC.)

[@larrygall5831]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to reply.. I've been rattling this around my head for 30 years LOL.

[@andrewdupuis1151]

I have tandy 64k color computer 2 with disk drive fd 501 adapter. will it work with it ?

[@pelgervampireduck]

try prince of persia, prehistorik, golden axe, double dragon, I think that machine can run up to loom and the secret of monkey island 1!. edit: in larry type "fast" or "faster" to increase speed. I think you can press + and - to do that too.

[@vap0rtranz]

This complexity makes me 2nd guess getting an old Tandy. :) No love for ProComm? That Tandy on DOS 6 can run it Filer transfer over serial means all you need is a cable. Plus I don't have Windows so this firmware flashing won't work for all of us. Kermit or minicom on the Linux side, which are $0. I found ProComm on 5 1/4 floppy on eBay for $20.

[@pelgervampireduck]

I wonder why you print screen captures and show us the paper instead of showing us the computer screen directly

[@anonymouse9879]

the red LED was flashing everytime you pressed a button

[@TheLemminkainen]

There is Tandy version from DOC available!!!

[@michaelwallen738]

I have tandy 1000 hx.. has 720kb 3.5 drive internal.. how do you get dos and other programs on Tandy that come in 1.44mb above disks?

[@a4000t]

This makes me think amiga could do these large formats also.

[@TheLemminkainen]

I wonmder does FlashFloppy firmware support these bigger disk sizes?

[@Rangerman9404]

I used to have a copy of Leisure Suit Larry, one thing I never quite figured out was how to get the ladder off the fire escape outside of the hooker's window. I know it involves the rope you get when you get tied to a bed by your new bride, but i can't quite figure out how to tie Larry w/o immobilizing him so he can't get the ladder, anyone know the game?

[@BlackEpyon]

I've never gotten far enough to know.

[@herbiehusker1889]

Would this work on an IBM XT pc clone?

[@zexceilxaros4011]

Do you think you could dump the firmware? , I can help you do it if you can.

[@vedi0boy]

"IE IS EVIL!!!" lol, on the NFormat website.

[@stevenjlovelace]

Toastytech: interesting gallery of old GUIs, and a now decades old rant against IE.

[@lorumipsum1129]

How can these floppy emulators work on the hex or ex internally, I thought the hex and ex use proprietary floppy drive cables that transferred power and data

[@BlackEpyon]

The EX used the standard floppy interface of the day (Shuggart, I think). Just be sure to set the drive to DS-0, or swap pins 10-12 on the ribbon if using a 3.5" without a drive selector switch. The HX however had power running through the ribbon. You need to fabricate your own cable if you replace the HX's internal drives, and pay damn close attention to the pinouts. Even with the power pins, you still need to swap pins 10 and 12 if using a modern drive (unless you're using this emulator which has a drive select jumper), because apparently the Tandy 1000 line always looked for DS-0 for the A drive, and DS-2 for the internal B drive (the external was DS-1), right up to the last of the line, the 1000 RSX. I've got a spreadsheet with the pinouts here if you're interested in doing this: www.mediafire.com/file/dsww97aymcqausm/floppy_pinouts.xlsx/file

[@christopherbaar4498]

Upgrading an 8088 with a V20 or an 8086 with a V30 I find interesting. I'm curious, since they do run faster, have you come across any software that it breaks, or makes unplayable?

[@christopherbaar4498]

I suspect you're right. I'm not too familiar with the early days of PC gaming. I know why the games run faster on newer machines, but I wasn't sure just how precise the timings needed to be.

[@BlackEpyon]

@@adriansdigitalbasement You can always use mode slow ;)

[@jstinn123]

Would the Gotek Floppy Emulator with HXC firmware work on a Tandy 1000 HX in place of one of it's 720k floppies.

[@BlackEpyon]

In theory, yes, so long as you fabricate your own cable. I've got a spreadsheet with the pinouts if you're interested in doing this. Be sure to note: 1) the power pins in the ribbon, 2) that the HX looked for DS-0 and DS-2 for it's internal drives (DS-1 was the external). So either incorporate that into the cable (if using a modern floppy without a DS-selector switch) or use the jumper pins where availible. www.mediafire.com/file/dsww97aymcqausm/floppy_pinouts.xlsx/file

[@christianandersen1495]

To get the 2.5 Mb images to work with the FlashFloppy Gotek firmware you need to specify the IMG format in the IMG.cfg file. I'm using the fallowing settings: [2500kb] cyls = 254 heads = 2 secs = 10 bps = 512 mode = mfm I'm sucessfually getting the 2.5Mb to work on my Tandy EX. To generate an IMG file in winimage set the format to: FAT 12/16 Sector per cluster 1(512) Not sure if it matters, www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/fs/fat/fat-1.html seams to indicat that is is 2 (1024) Total number of tracks 5100 (giving a trotal image size of 2550 KB) FAT entries 224 or 112 (not sure if it matters) Sectors per track 9 Heads 2 Rest set to zero Hopes this helps others.

[@nunyabusiness7602]

After performing this awesome upgrade to your Tandy 1000 HX/EX add a CF card hard drive! It's easy. First, you'll need to get these two components: - Tandy 1000 EX/HX PLUA-ISA/R Adapter (converts the PLUS plug into an ISA slot) -- www.tindie.com/products/CyberneticSys/tandy-1000-exhx-plus-isar-adapter/ - XT-CF-Mini Bootable 8-bit ISA CF Card Interface (draws power from the ISA slot) -- monotech.fwscart.com/XT-CF-Mini_Bootable_8-bit_ISA_CF_Card_Interface/p6083514_19478750.aspx I can confirm this setup works because I have it installed in my Tandy 1000 HX. A truly plug-and-play way to add a hard drive to your Tandy 1000 HX/EX!

[@shaunallen9337]

DOS 2.11 OMG.. I just found your page... 1985 256kb upgraded to 640kb

[@DookNookim]

Is this trick also possible when emulating a Tandy 1000 SL/2 in PCem v17? I can read parts of a disk thanks to biosptch.sys, but not the whole disk.

[@earthlydescent]

There's a Tandy version of Defender of the Crown.

[@loughkb]

You might want to mask out that phone number. A lady named Johnson is probably getting a crapload of phone calls. (Yes, I dialed it. Who knows, maybe there would still be a modem tone there, but alas, no.)

[@thecaptain2281]

That is funny as hell!

[@MomMom4Cubs]

I, too dialled it. I was SO disappointed that it's not a modem, just some lady's cel phone. I was (totally irrationally) hoping for BBS gateway.

[@peteasmr2952]

@@MomMom4Cubs Phone numbers get recycled all the time sadly, I hate when a place calls it a new number no its someones old number who had bill collectors or other people who still call it looking for them. I actually have a friend on facebook because my friends texted my old number and the lady was like who are you people and I ended up sending her a message apologising for forgetting to give them my new number.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@peteasmr2952 yeah, last time I had a landline I was getting three calls a day for a Mr Smith. One even gave me his address when he didn’t believe me that wasn’t where he’d been connected to (great security there pal!). I wrote to him to tell him what was going on and could he please update his info, but I still kept getting those calls for months. So I just switched to mobile-only, which has been my number for over a decade now.

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi All, i have a gotek that is being used on a Pentium 100 because the dallas RTC chip is dead so i cant use any hard drive. Luckally the PC has 16 meg, so i use my gotek image 00 as a dos 6.22 boot disk and it is configured to create a 12meg ram disk All you need to do it type set comspec=c:\ or whatever the ram drive is called and you can swap floppies without worried about the dreaded "cannot find command.com" The other images has floppy game images a few utilities, i have enough room to play duke nukem 1 @ 2, i can even copy Doom to the ram drive and play it The only set back is that the gotek emulates the slow access speed of a floppy as well , not sure if that was needed for some disk copy programs, i have the same issue with say the amiga and C64 emulators that mimic the floppy speed and timing as well ( i think a later amiga emulator has a tick box to run the floppy at full speed ) These things are excellent to back up your floppies while they still work to USB , then made a image of the USB to your harddrive or external back up hard drive BTW , a built in cheat in the start up of leisure suite larry is i think Control X to quit asking questions Regards George

[@g3overload203]

The 8-Bit Guy did a video about these drives.

[@ZombieRyushu]

Have you considered trying to network this Tandy?

[@ZombieRyushu]

I have a retrofitted Tandy 1000 TL Myself. I'd be willing to share what I know in exchange for help with some things I don't understand.

[@semco72057]

I am surprised that you are getting those games to work on that computer since the Basic was written for the IBM and compatible computers. Tandy Basic is a little different.

[@millermonsterair]

the Tandy 1000 EX was the first pc i ever had. it was back in '93 when an uncle of mine gave it to me. it was pretty cool. had some cool games i loved playing. i wish i hadnt have gotten rid of it, but kinda had no choice because i was sent to a group home in 2000, couldnt take it with me and when i turned 18 and was "released", the woman who gave birth to me and her husband had gotten rid of everything of mine to sell everything they could for meth. someone had gotten my tandy. i was sad.

[@DangerousPictures]

Buy the software once, dump it from the chip afterwards

[@JmanNo42]

USE speeed in LL menu

[@kd1s]

My very first DOS machine was an XT. That got replaced by a Tandy 1000 HX. Then moved onto laptops - all Dell and through Win95 on. Now on a Dell Latitude E6420 running Windows 10.

[@scottex8370]

Could you connect a SSD to it with a USB to SATA adapter?

[@scottex8370]

Adrian Black The floppy drive emulator had a USB port, couldn't you plug it into that?

[@3beltwesty]

The first computer I used with USB was a late 1995 IBM 330 with a pentium 166mhz. Later on, I had a mess of IBM 6589 Pentium Pros these came out in 1996 and have two USB on the motherboard. I used a 8 meg USB stick eons ago to load drivers on many of these Pentium Pro 356 IBM machines. With win95 I think a patch had to be used. With win98 it worked better, with 98SE most all of the weirdness stopped. With some early USB scanners and my external Sony 2X CD burner with Win95 often one had to reboot, roll the dice and maybe it worked. ie plug and play might see the usb gizmo but often there was problems. By win2000 and Win98SE USB worked fine on those 1996 Ibm Pentium Pros. The 2nd edition of the IBM 330 manual is here from June 1996 with 2 usb connectors ps-2.kev009.com/pccbbs/commercial_desktop/6577us.pdf It really was the later 1990's that usb got into the lessor more clone computers.;) and of course once the USB bugs in software got ironed out. I once had this odd customer bring in a pre "fob usb" that looked like a giant bar of soap box with cable. It held 4 megs of ram and had sticks of ram from a motherboard, I had a dual boot emachine with win98 and win2000 that only the win2000 would read it.

[@mspenrice]

You could connect any FAT16 or FAT32 formatted USB device to it, but it'll still be limited to reading no more than the 1000 correctly named floppy image files from that drive's root directory (or rather fewer with FAT16 because of the limited number of RD entries, and probably the sector count and overall size limits too especially if using 2.5mb images), one at a time, at no more than maybe 13kb/sec (assuming 11-sector images with near-perfect virtual sector skewing, only skipping every other sector), and between the whole lot you'd have less than 3gb all up. In any case, connecting a modern SSD to a machine like the Tandy would be a complete waste; its CPU bus is only capable of transferring single digit mb/sec (maybe upto 16mb/sec with the 386SX model), and the external bus which essentially every device other than the CPU and memory connects to is slightly slower still. Even a mechanical drive of more than about 4gb would totally saturate it, and not show a great deal of slowdown from head seeking or whatever because its own onboard cache would be more than sufficient to keep the host system totally busy with actual R/W even during the slack period where nothing was actually moving on or off the physical disc. Plus you'll probably have quite a job finding enough Tandy compatible program or other data to fill even that size of drive, because things from the pre-CDROM, pre-multimedia age just weren't that large... a 4 gig drive will of course store the equivalent of rather more than 5000 DSDDs. That's why CF and (micro)SD cards (and USB sticks) have become the storage of choice for most retro systems, because even those are more than fast and capacious enough, and they're physically very small (making it easy to design an adapter that offers virtual tape, floppy or hard drive storage inside the space needed for an original onboard cassette deck, 3.5" FDD or 2.5" HDD), have extremely low power consumption, and are very simple to interface to. The signalling frequency and protocol complexity demands of SATA would be a completely unnecessary hassle, really, and would just make the adaptor more expensive and power hungry, as well as pretty much implying the use of a storage volume of which 90% or more would be completely unused. If you're after a flash replacement for the machine's actual hard disk, what you want is a compact flash card and a 3.5 to 2.5 inch IDE adaptor... they can directly work in IDE mode, and a 4gb one that you'll need to use some fancy drive overlay software to access more than 1/8th of will cost you next to nothing. Total cost of conversion is under $10... And again, that'll be absolutely as fast as the machine can handle. An equivalent device for the Atari ST which plugs into its external HDD port and uses SD cards utterly saturates the ~1.5mb, DMA-driven bus (which is itself rather faster than what most 80s/early 90s PCs can boast of being able to push data across their IDE cables at, as they largely use PIO modes that involve moving the data through the CPU on its way between the disc and memory or vice versa), without a SATA or indeed USB2 port in sight... Really, USB1.1 would do the job just as well.

[@BlackEpyon]

There's an 8-bit USB card on lotech's website www.lo-tech.co.uk/product/isa-usb-adapter-pcb/ I don't know if he's active any more, and it shows out of stock, but he's got schematics and links to the BIOS on the wiki page www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/Lo-tech_ISA_USB_Adapter#Bill_of_Materials so you should be able to make your own onto a perf board with a PLUS interface (the expansion interface that the Tandy 1000 EX and HX used). That's what I did with the ISA-CF adapter card - built my own. I haven't used the USB card, so I assume that it just registers the USB drive as a psudo hard drive on boot up in the way that the CompactFlash does.

[@nyccollin]

18:50 it's McIntosh apple now. Mandela Effect.

[@gapadad2]

yOU MADE ME GET OUT MY TANDY AND FIRE IT UP. aLL i HAVE IS A DOS DISK THOUGH. IS THERE SOFTWARE ON LINE THAT CAN BE DOWN LOADED?

[@pelgervampireduck]

go to any abandonware site, there are lots of games and programs for DOS everywhere. all you need is the computer with the internet connection to have a floppy drive so you can transfer the files.

[@gapadad2]

thanks